Measurement Issues in Marital Research: A Review and Critique of Contemporary Survey Instruments

Abstract

Sabin examines the self-report measures used to assess various constructs of concern to marital research with specific attention to selected indicators of marital satisfaction marital adjustment and marital quality. Indicators of marital intimacy and marital complaints are also reviewed. Attention is also directed to the measures of concepts linked more directly to marital stability including measures of commitment relationship alternatives and potential for marital dissolution. The author emphasizes several points upon concluding his review. First while the adjustment quality measures are intended to provide a broad profile of marital relationships they are psychometrically flawed in several ways. Their most fundamental problem has to do with the threats to validity that result from the blending of units and objects of analyses within a single measure. It is not reasonable to scale different units and objects of analyses as if they are comparable phenomena because there is no way of knowing what the resulting score actually represents. More than likely what accounts for the more objective characteristics of a relationship are confounded by the more subjective impressions of the relationship particularly when these items of information are simultaneously solicited. Finally when a marital adjustment scale is used it becomes virtually impossible to assess related concepts independently. These problems lead to the conclusion that the use of measures of adjustment should be curtailed and that satisfaction quality be used to refer only to the subjective evaluations that a person makes of his or her marital relationship. There is also an obvious need to further develop measures of important and diverse marital concepts; developers of future measures must attend to their conceptual operational and psychometric properties. It is imperative as well that measures be subjected to critical and multiple tests of their validity before their widespread adoption and use be advocated. It is also essential that all researchers develop an appreciation for the central role of measurement in the research process. The understanding of social phenomena when that understanding is derived from survey research is predicated on the quality of the measures employed by researchers.